Welcome to my blog. Astronomy is a fantastic hobby. I started off with just a passing interest, but now it's never far from my mind. My earliest posts were all about observations, but now, I write about all sorts of astronomy related topics. Please feel free to comment, or subscribe to receive an email when I add a new post. Enjoy, and thanks for reading.

Wednesday, 13 May 2015

The Astrocamp Hangover – Observing Report

I got home after Astrocamp
riding on a wave of enjoyment and astro related optimism.I had a great time meeting lots of people
have a huge amount to be thankful for.I
look forward to meeting them all again, and this time, with fully fit and
operational leg!Coming back home and
monitoring my Twitter feedback and Astrocamp Facebook page, the timelines have
been full of similar thoughts and expressions of thanks to all concerned.I’ve already put in for the time off in September
for the next Astrocamp, and wait to see if I can get it signed off, and then to
see if I can get a pitch.September does
provide a wider window of observing opportunities with its darker nights, and
perhaps (hopefully) more reliable weather.We shall see.

The night that most people
would have arrived home was last night, the 12th May. Given that over the whole of Astrocamp, the
total amount of night time observable conditions stretched to barely 45
minutes, you could say that it was typical that the first night at home was
forecast to be perfectly clear. The moon
was due to rise in the early hours of the morning, and so the conditions were
favourable. That is, except for the fact
that the following day, everyone was back in work. However, that didn’t stop me from getting the
SBT out in the back garden and carrying on the start party in my own little
way. I would like to think that there
were others doing the same thing in their own observing sites up and down the
country.

And so, my observing
report. The nights are quite light this
time of year, so the first objects tend to be the brightest ones visible in the
sky. The session started at around 21.50
when the horizon was still quite bright, but Jupiter and Venus shone
brighter. My target was Jupiter and its
moons. I first observed it using the 8mm
BST, and within the same field of view managed to pick out an unclassified 10th
magnitude star. A tiny pin prick of
light. The planet itself showed up
really well showing both the equatorial belts, and much more detail than I have
seen recently. Dropping in the 5mm BST
eyepiece, the image was slightly blurred, but the features were still
visible. The dual-speed focuser upgrade
certainly helped achieving optimum focus on the planet.

By 10.30, enough of the
constellation of Leo was visible against the darkening sky for me to navigate
to the Leo Triplet. Whilst not the
darkest of conditions, I could still make out all 3 components of the triplet
with relative ease. However, I didn’t
observe it for long because of the lighter conditions still present.

Looking across the sky, I
started picking out some of the other constellations. The bowl of Virgo, Coma Berenices and
Bootes. High overhead, I could see Ursa
Major. Whilst looking around Ursa Major,
I thought I would try to locate M101, but initially I ended up viewing the
Whirpool Galaxy, M51, by mistake. Both
cores were clearly visible, and now the sky was starting to get much darker,
more detail surrounding the cores started to present itself. Whilst I was pleased to see it, I still
wanted to track down M101, so I moved on.
I was using the 32mm Panaview eyepiece for this target, and it didn’t
fail to impress. The target wasn’t
particularly bright, but it did appear very large indeed. Perhaps because of the low magnification, or
the timing of the observation, I couldn’t make out much in the way of
structure, but nevertheless, it was an object I was really impressed with.

The session
continued. Onto M3, a condensed cluster
in Canes Venatici. I spent quite a while
observing this target. I have seen it
before, but only in the 150p. This time,
with the SBT, I decided to spend a bit more time swapping around the
eyepieces. I first picked it up in the
32mm eyepiece. At first, the cluster was obvious, but it wasn’t particularly
easy to resolve any particular stars in the cluster. I decide to try the 12mm BST instead. The feint fuzzy area of the cluster suddenly
became much more defined. I started to
be able to pick out many more individual stars.
Possibly even hundreds. I decided
to push further, and so, I dropped in the 8mm eyepiece to see exactly how good
I could get the view. This time, I could
see even more. With the smaller
eyepieces, the background to the cluster grew ever darker which helped me to
resolve even more detail. It was the
main ‘wow’ moment of the evening for me.

Leaving the 8mm eyepiece
in the focuser, I tracked down the next target, M92. This was another awesome cluster, especially
at the higher magnifications. I thought
it very similar to M3 and was equally as impressed.

Moving further into
Hercules, I decided that time was getting on.
I had put myself a cut-off time of 11.00 as I needed to be up for work
the next morning and I had already exceeded it.
But, after the disappointing weather of the weekend, and conditions so
favourable, I decided to squeeze one more in before the end of the night. The final target was M13. An extract from the notebook on the night….

“Clusters at higher mag in the SBT are brilliant…”

That kind of says it all
really. These are the first set of true
clusters I have gone after since the arrival of the SBT, and they haven’t disappointed. At 8mm, M13 was readily resolved as a vast
collection of individual stars. I was
impressed. Very impressed.

Sadly, I had to call it a
night there. Conditions were so good and
it was a bit of a wrench to bring myself to put the scope away. Conditions are favourable for tonight too,
but it remains to be seen if I can get outside.
If only this were a Friday evening….

So, that’s the report of
my Astrocamp hangover. The event has
certainly fanned the flames of enthusiasm of the hobby and I managed to head
off the ‘downer’ of having to come home by having a cracking little session out
the back garden. And remember, if we are on course to have a collision with an Asteroid, all we need to save the entire human race is a huge quantity of Dulux.